~ I am restoring an Austin-Healey and want to paint it Primrose Yellow, an
~ original A-H color. I visited one of two local auto paint stores today. They
~ sell PPG auto paints. All I had was a picture of an A-H painted Primrose
~ Yellow. They were unable to find A-H Primrose Yellow in their
~ catalogs. They did list a bunch of British car colors but they were all for
~ cars of more recent vintage. I found a Vauxhall color, Kashmire Yellow, that
~ looks real similar to Primrose Yellow. Even though there was a paint chip for
~ Kashmire their source didn't have a PPG formulation for it. There is another
~ store here that sells Dupont auto paints but I haven't visited them yet.
When you do, try asking for Pale Primrose, which I believe is the
actual BMC color name. You can also get many BMC color formulations,
indexed to their names, from a couple of sources:
- Lindsay Porter's book "MGB Guide to Maintenance and DIY Restoration"
contains a fairly comprehensive table of paint codes for classic BMC
colors with their modern formulas. I used to have a copy, but I
think it got left at someone's house or in a car or trailer... Does
anyone here have that book so that Olin doesn't have to buy the whole
thing for a car he hasn't got?
- Moss Motors should be able to look up the color for you; they used
to offer a fairly comprehensive list of color names and codes, but
I haven't seen that in some time.
The descriptions in Porter's book are worth reading, but then descriptions
of colors are even weirder than their names. "Moss" and "Bracken" are
two of the B(P)L colors that got inflicted on a number of unfortunate
mid-Seventies MGBs; I'm not sure which is which, but one looks like
dried Dijon mustard and one looks like something that came out of an
unnamed bodily orifice, a long time ago in a galaxy far away...
For the record, I *like* pale primrose, Olin. My never-completed Bugeye
was going to be Pale Primrose, a soft but sunny yellow. I've seen at
least one Big Healey in that color, and it's very sharp; if you can't
find it at all, try to locate a mid-sixties Chevrolet color called
Sunfire Yellow, used at least on '65 Corvettes; the president of the
Healey Club I used to hang around with had a 'Vette that color, and it
was the subject of much admiration from the assembled club members even
if it WASN'T British...
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